Sunday, September 21, 2014

Andrew Sullivan calls it “illiberal liberalism,” and I find the phrase well chosen. In fact, I
have posted about illiberal liberalism on a few occasions. Link here.

Of course, illiberal liberalism is really radical politics.
You know it as political correctness. It’s form of indoctrination.

It tells people not to argue, not to dispute, not to debate with
opposing ideas.

It prefers to condemn and discredit the messenger.

Sullivan writes:

Writers
are not just condemned any more for being wrong or dumb or rigid. They are
condemned as sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, blah blah blah – almost
as a reflex in trying to discredit their work. That’s particularly true when it
comes to fascinating issues like race or gender or sexual orientation, where
liberalism today seems to insist that there are absolutely no aggregate
differences between genders, races, ethnicities, or sexual orientations, except
those created by oppression and discrimination and bigotry. Anyone even daring
to bring up these topics is subjected to intense pressure, profound disapproval
and ostracism. This illiberal liberalism is not new, of course. But it’s still
depressingly common.

The enemy of political correctness is scientific fact and
objective reality.

Writing about Sam Harris, Sullivan explains that Harris:

…
assumes that there are some essential biological and psychological differences
between men and women, and for a certain kind of leftist, this is an
intolerable heresy. If that truth cannot be suppressed or rebutted in a free
society, its adherents must be stigmatized as bigots.

The marketplace of ideas, Sullivan continues, does not
always function to please ideologues:

The
free flow of ideas will often lead to different audiences for different
authors. That some books by white Americans are read disproportionately by
whites doesn’t mean they’re racist. And, yes, style of writing – especially the combative, testosteroned
debates that occur online or typify the slash-and-burn atheist conversation –
can lead to a disproportionately male-skewed audience for that kind of thing.
But all that is a function of free choice in a free market of ideas – not some
kind of institutional sexism – let alone personal sexism. Why we cannot revel
in these differences and embrace them as part of what makes being human so
fascinating and variable is beyond me. But clearly it threatens people. Reality
can.

Why do people practice illiberal liberalism?

Since they cannot win an argument based on facts, and since
they cannot persuade anyone of the rational validity of their own ideas, they try to
enforce them through threat and intimidation.

Sullivan says:

The
point is the enforcement of an ideology by the weapon of stigma and social
ostracism.

It is the rare (0 probability) occasion when any two people will agree on every issue. We can agree with Sullivan's position on this issue now. And I do. While disagreeing with him on other issues later. The poignant insight is the merit-based ruler by which we measure individuals, ideas, and actions.

When Sullivan edited The New Republic, he gave Herrnstein and Murray a cover story for The Bell Curve in 1994, which got him much denounced by his own staff. Although Marty Peretz was on his side over The Bell Curve, it's usually assumed that the Bell Curve brouhaha played a big role in getting him canned later.